The Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.)

APRIL 24–29, 1917

Report on the Agrarian Question

      April 28 (May 11)

Comrades,the agrarian question was threshed out so thoroughly
      by our Party during the first revolution that by this time, I
      think, our ideas on the subject are pretty well
      defined. Indirect proof of this is to be found in the fact that
      the committee of the Conference composed of comrades interested
      and fully versed in this subject have agreed on the proposed
      draft resolution without making any substantial corrections. I
      shall therefore confine myself to very brief remarks. And since
      all members have proof-sheets of the draft, there is no need to
      read it in full.

Thepresent growth of the agrarian movement throughout Russia is
      perfectly obvious and undeniable. Our Party Programme, proposed
      by the Mensheviks and adopted by the Stockholm Congress in 1906,
      was refuted even in the course of the first Russian
      revolution. At that Congress the Mensheviks succeeded in getting
      their programme of municipalisation adopted. The essence of
      their programme was as follows: the peasant lands, communal and
      homestead, were to remain the property of the peasants while the
      landed estates were to be taken over by local self-government
      bodies. One of the Mensheviks’ chief arguments in favour of such
      a programme was that the peasants would never understand the
      transfer of peasant land to anyone but themselves. Anyone
      acquainted with the Minutes of the Stockholm Congress will
      recollect that this argument was particularly stressed both by
      Maslov, who made the report, and by Kostrov. We should not
      forget, as is often done nowadays, that this happened before the
      First Duma, when there was no objectiveinformation about the
      character of the peasant movement and its strength. Everyone
      knew that Russia was aflame with the agrarian revolution, but no
      one knew how the agrarian movement would be organised, or in
      what direction the peasant revolution would develop. It was
      impossible to check whether the opinions expressed by the
      Congress were the real and practical views held by the peasants
      themselves. This was why the Mensheviks’ argument had carried
      such weight. Soon after the Stockholm Congress, we received the
      first serious indication of how the peasants viewed this
      question.In both the First and the Second Dumas, the peasants
      themselves put forward the Trudovik “Bill of
      the
104”.[2]I made a special study of the signatures to this
      bill, carefully studied the views of the various deputies, their
      class affiliations, and the extent to which they may be called
      peasants. I stated categorically in my book, which was burned by
      the tsarist censor but which I will
republish,[3]that the
      overwhelming majority of these 104 signatories were
      peasants. That bill called for the nationalisation of the
      land. The peasants said that the entire land would become the
      property of the state.

How,then, are we to account for the fact that in both Dumas the
      deputies representing the peasants of all Russia preferred
      nationalisation to the measure proposed in both Dumas by the
      Mensheviks from the point of view of the peasants’ interests?
      The Mensheviks proposed that the peasants retain the ownership
      of their own lands, and that only the landed estates should be
      given to the people; the peasants, however, maintained that the
      entire land should be given to the people. How are we to account
      for this? The Socialist-Revolutionaries say that owing to their
      commune organisation the Russian peasants favour socialisation,
      the labour principle. All this phraseology is absolutely devoid
      of common sense, it is nothing but words. But how are we to
      account for this? I think the peasants came to this conclusion
      because all landownership in Russia, both peasants’ and
      landowners’, communal and homestead, is permeated with old,
      semi-feudal relationships, and the peasants, considering market
      conditions, had to demand the transfer of the land to all the
      people. The peasants say that the tangle of old agrarian life
      can only be unravelled by nationalisation.Theirpoint of view is bourgeois; by equalitarian land tenure
      they mean the confiscation of the landed estates, but not the
      equalisation of individual proprietors. By nationalisation they
      mean an actual reallotment of all the land among the
      peasants. This is a grand bourgeois project. No peasant spoke
      about equalisation or socialisation; but they all said it was
      impossible to wait any longer, that all the land had to be
      cleared,in other words, that farming could not be carried on in
      the old way under twentieth-century conditions. TheStolypin
      Reform[4]has since then confused the land question still
      more. That is what the peasants have in mind when they demand
      nationalisation. It means a reallotment of all the land. There
      are to be no varied forms of landownership. There is not the
      slightest suggestion of socialisation. This demand by the
      peasants is called equalitarian because, as a brief summary of
      the statistics relating to land holdings in 1905 shows, 300
      peasant families held as much land (2,000dessiatines)
      as one landowner’s family. In this sense it is, of course,
      equalitarian, but it does not imply that all small farms are to
      be equalised. The Bill of the 104 shows the opposite.

Theseare the essential points that have to be made in order to
      give scientific support to the view that nationalisation in
      Russia, as far as bourgeois democracy is concerned, is
      necessary. But it is also necessary for another reason—it
      deals a mighty blow at private ownership of the means of
      production. It is simply absurd to imagine that after the
      abolition of private property in land everything in Russia will
      remain as before.

Thenfollow some practical conclusions and demands. of the minor
      amendments in the draft I shall call attention to the
      following. The first point reads: “The party of the proletariat
      will support with all its might the immediate and complete
      confiscation of all landed estates....” Instead of “will
      support” we ought to say “will fight for”....Our point of view
      is not that the peasants have not enough land and that they need
      more. That is the current opinion. We say that the landed
      estates are the basis of oppression that crushes the peasants
      and keeps them backward. The question is not whether the
      peasants have or have not enough land. Down with
      serfdom!—this is the way the issue should be stated from
      the point of view of the revolutionary classstruggle, and not
      from the point of view of those officials who try to figure out
      how much land they have and by what norms it should be
      allotted. I suggest that the order of points 2 and 3 should be
      reversed, because, to us, the thing that matters is
      revolutionary initiative, and the law must be the result of
      it.If you wait until the law is written,and
      yourselves do not develop revolutionary initiative,you
      will have neither the law nor the land.

Peoplevery often object to nationalisation because, they say,
      it requires a colossal bureaucratic apparatus. That is true, but
      state landownership implies that every peasant is leasing the
      land from the state. The subletting of leaseholds is
      prohibited. But the question of how much and what kind of land
      the peasant shall lease must be entirely settled by the proper
      democratic, not bureaucratic, organ of authority.

For“farm-hands” we substitute “agricultural labourers”. Several
      comrades declared that the word “farm-hand” was offensive;
      objections were raised to this word. It should be deleted.

Weshould not speak now of proletarian-peasant committees or
      Soviets in connection with the settlement of the land question,
      for, as we see, the peasants have set up Soviets of Soldiers’
      Deputies, thus creating a division between the proletariat and
      the peasantry.

Thepetty-bourgeois defencist parties, as we know, stand for the
      land question being put off until theConstituent
      Assemblymeets. We are for the immediate transfer of the
      land to the peasants in a highly organised manner. We are
      emphatically against anarchic seizing of land. You propose that
      the peasants enter into agreements with the landowners. We say
      that the land should be taken over and cultivated right now if
      we wish to avert famine, to save the country from the debacle
      which is advancing upon it with incredible speed. One cannot now
      accept the prescriptions offered by Shingaryov and the Cadets,
      who suggest waiting for the convocation of the Constituent
      Assembly, the date of which has not been fixed yet, or making
      arrangements with the landowners for renting land. The peasants
      are already seizing the land without paying for it, or paying
      only a quarter of the rent.

Onecomrade has brought a local resolution, from Penza Gubernia,
      saying that the peasants are seizing the landowners’
      agricultural implements, which however they do not divide among
      the households, but convert into common property. They are
      establishing a definite order of sequence, a rule, for using
      these implements to cultivate all the land. In resorting to such
      measures, they are guided by the desire to increase agricultural
      production. This is a matter of principle of tremendous
      significance, for all that the landowners and capitalists shout
      about it being anarchy. But if you are going to chatter and
      shout about this being anarchy, while the peasants sit back and
      wait, then you will indeed have anarchy. The peasants have shown
      that they understand farming conditions and social control
      better than the government officials, and apply such control a
      hundred times more efficiently. Such a measure, which is
      doubtless quite practicable in a small village, inevitably leads
      to more sweeping measures. When the peasant comes to learn
      this—and he has already begun to learn it—the
      knowledge of bourgeois professors will not be needed; he will
      himself come to the conclusion that it is essential to utilise
      the agricultural implements, not only in the small farms, but
      for the cultivation of all the land. How they do this is
      unimportant. We do not know whether they combine their
      individual plots for common ploughing and sowing or not, and it
      does not matter if they do it differently. What does matter is
      that the peasants are fortunate in not having to face a large
      number of petty-bourgeois intellectuals, who style themselves
      Marxists and Social-Democrats, and with a grave mien lecture the
      people about the time not yet being ripe for a socialist
      revolution and that therefore the peasants must not take the
      land immediately. Fortunately there are few such gentlemen in
      the Russian countryside. If the peasants contented themselves
      merely with taking the land by arrangement with the landowners,
      and failed to apply their experience collectively, failure would
      be inevitable, and the peasant committees would become a mere
      toy, a meaningless game. This is why we propose to addPoint 8[1]to the draft resolution.

Oncewe know that the local peasants have themselves taken this
      initiative, it is our duty to say that we approve and recommend
      this initiative. Only this can serve as a guarantee that the
      revolution will not be limited to formal measures, that the
      struggle against the crisis will not remain a mere subject for
      departmental discussion and Shingaryov’s epistles, but that the
      peasants will actually go ahead in an organised way to combat
      famine and to increase production.

[1][PLACEHOLDER.]—Lenin

[2][PLACEHOLDER.]

[3]Thereference is toThe Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in
      the
      First Russian Revolution, 1905–1907, written towards the end of
      1907.  The book was printed in St. Petersburg in 1908, but the
      police seized it while still at the printers and destroyed
      it. Only one copy was saved.  The book was first published in
      1917.

[4][PLACEHOLDER.]